Should materials be buyable with cr

Yes, I think so. Credits are surprisingly useless after a certain point in Elite. I never understood why you can't spend money to buy them and it feels quite immersion breaking because they've been designed to be a completely different gameplay loop that is disconnected from the rest of the game, to the point I wouldn't bother with engineering if it wasn't a power creep you can't avoid forever. You can have a FC, buy extremely high tech or basic commodities like water or hydrogen, but for some weird reason you can't buy iron, carbon or a chemical processor..
 
buying materials would just turn everything in the game into "mine some painite and then buy ship" with a few extra steps.

I do agree that some materials should be less of a pain to obtain though. Personally, I'd expand the pool of rewards available from missions according to faction allegiance and state, so that a faction in outbreak has a chance of offering a few PIs, an imperial faction might offer imp shielding, a faction in civil unrest might offer improvised components, and so on. G5 mats for missions are capped at 5 so a single HGE will still beat out any individual mission, but if you get unlucky with the signal sources they'll be another avenue to look for them.
To solve the problem of CDCs and imperial shielding in colonia they could do the same thing they do with shipyard selection and treat anarchies as the wildcard option with a reduced chance of spawning superpower materials (at the cost of diluting the material pool, sucks for you if you go looking at an anarchy outbreak system for PIs and their board is full of CDCs)
 
From a mechanics perspective here. Materials trading makes absolutely 0 sense. If I want to buy a turbo for my M3 I dont normally trade for it with another part unless its Facebook marketplace. Even then cash is king. It should be no different in elite.
On top of that and if that's the case. Engineering should cost money as well. I dont know a single other mechanic that works for free.
 
Should be tradeable between players using fleet carriers, for a variety of things, credits being just one of them.

Perhaps I have a load of tier five materials, and want a thargoid probe, I should be able to put up a trade for that probe, and pay in materials.

Same thing for selling engineered modules/ships
 
Last edited:
A lot of the hate is probably people who have grinded engineers 24/7, and would feel ripped off if you could access things the 'easy' way (whatever that means, lol).

Personally, I wouldn't have a problem with it, but then again, I'm pro a player trading hall, where items one player grinded could be exchanged for cash, and vice versa, and apparently that's super controversial.....
 
Because it removes reasons to engage in the game.
You can still engage, just in a different way. Not everyone does combat, for example, and some people only do combat. Some people will never touch CGs, others can't get enough. Some live in Colonia, others don't. Blaze your own trail.
 
Yeah it's weird you can blow up an Anaconda for materials, but not just buy one and take them out.

That said, the mechanics of buying materials just swaps material grind for extra credit grind - if you're so inclined.
 
Materials can be quite the pain to obtain, from blowing up ships for manufactured materials that somehow still work to driving around a planet all day looking for raw materials.

If we were able to buy these materials then there would be less of a grind and it means more people would be able to participate in pvp etc.

Your thoughts

materials shouldn't exist and engineering should be done for little credits.

the next best fix would indeed be npc selling them for credits. however, that would then be just constantly trading one currency into another (or dozens of others) for no real reason and that would then make painfully clear how stupid materials are, as they have no real function in the game except adding artificial and arbitrary complexity. the world isn't ready for that truth.
 
materials shouldn't exist and engineering should be done for little credits.

the next best fix would indeed be npc selling them for credits. however, that would then be just constantly trading one currency into another (or dozens of others) for no real reason and that would then make painfully clear how stupid materials are, as they have no real function in the game except adding artificial and arbitrary complexity. the world isn't ready for that truth.
Well, we already have 2 actually currencies in game (CR and ARX) and are about to get a 3rd in Horizons (for Elite Feet stuff). It's a bit odd that I can't get an NPC to exchange a fancy new helmet, or get someone to paint my ship a different colour in exchange for enough credits to buy a fully kitted out Anaconda, but that's the way it is...
 
I'm actually on the fence with this one...

My initial reaction is a big no. I like to earn my G5 stuff the hard way...

But if we could buy materials there's the possibility that we could also SELL materials. And that would suit my role playing as a Salvager/treasure hunter very nicely...

It would provide an option to collect the materials needed to upgrade your ship while at the same time making an income by selling off the surplus and I think I'd probably enjoy that kind of gameplay a lot.
 
Back
Top Bottom